Dr. Barbara Sturm on the future of her cult beauty brand
As the skin-care category boomed in the last decade, there were certain standout brands that captivated consumers and industry executives alike. Alongside Drunk Elephant, Tatcha, Augustinus Bader and others, there was Dr. Barbara Sturm. A celebrity in her own right, founder Dr. Barbara Sturm's clients include Kate Moss, Cher, Angela Bassett and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley -- and she's been credited with creating the A-lister favorite vampire facial. Sturm's aesthetics business gave her the concept for her namesake brand, which is now a best seller at Sephora and Net-a-Porter, and sells on its DTC site. But as a trained German aesthetics doctor, she never planned on becoming a beauty brand founder and CEO. "I started creating products, and that's how I got into that industry, but [it was] still only designed for helping my patients," Sturm said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. "Because of distribution issues -- I actually only wanted to be on Net-a-Porter to be able to distribute to my patients [around the] world -- they launched me. From that point, every retailer called me up and said, 'Dr. Sturm, we want your products.'" Despite the pandemic, the brand has grown from a cult beauty favorite into a mainstream business. The company has seen DTC sales grow 400% since March, and it relaunched its website last September. "It's kind of tricky to launch a new website during this period, but we did super, super well with it. It could have been quite a catastrophic experience," said Dr. Strum. "We are so happy to have it. We put a lot of love and effort into it to really serve our customers as well as we can. It's not just like, 'Oh, buy my products.' It's more like you get education here; you get so much more insight."